I’ve fallen into the habit of spending more time speaking about what I am going to do, than simply doing it. Though this might at first seem an unfortunate habit, I’ve also come to enjoy it. Whenever I read a book, I always read the foreward, the epilogue, the acknowledgements and even the title page. Occasionally I will read the text. I guess I figure I can learn more about what a book is about by trying to understand the author’s intention than by reading the book. Also, it’s fun. It’s foreplay. Can the author entice me enough to invest a significant portion of my time to read the book, a portion of time that could be spent reading dozens and dozens of forewards? Similarly, whenever I watch a movie, especially a big blockbuster science fiction movie, it’s always the first half-hour that I enjoy the most – the set-up. The gradual transformation of normality to abnormality. How will it happen? How will this idyllic, boring suburb of a medium sized city be transformed into an apocalyptic hell? How will this run of the mill father of two children become the saviour of the world? That’s what I’m interested in. The actual details of the hell, the acts of saviourhood, the return to normality are all fluff as far as I’m concerned. I’m only interested in the set-up.

So when it comes time to write, I guess I find myself spending more time trying to explain what I am going to write, than actually writing. I spend more time trying to justify the time I am planning to invest, more time describing how I am going to go about it, how detailed, what tone, what setting, etc. than I actually spend writing. In fact, over the course of my writing life, I have never actually gotten around to writing anything but forewards, abstracts and outlines – reams and reams of unfulfilled promises, unrealized visions, basically junk. Why is that? Maybe it’s because I’m still trying to figure out whether I have something worth writing about. Just as I try to gauge the value of a book by reading the foreward, I try to gauge the value of my own writing by writing a foreward. Can I entice myself into writing a book by writing a foreward? If so, I’ve yet to succeed. Though, I continue to write. I continue to plan, to make superficial jabs, small dents into the blank page before me to see what comes of it. Usually it’s just a crumpled piece of paper that ends up in the trash.

I guess a side benefit of writing this kind of hogwash is that I keep writing. Not that I see myself improving at all. In fact, I see my writing ability dimishing quite a lot as I spend more time doing other things totally unrelated to writing. I see my vocabulary shrinking to a smaller and smaller set of words. My sentences become shorter. My adjectives become bland. My comparisons become cliché. My puns become obvious. But the ideas, hopefully, the ideas are the same as they were.

I guess I also gain some level of insight by putting my thoughts on paper. I learn my insecurities. I learn my overconfidence. I see how authoritarian my style can be at times depending on what I am writing about. Maybe that comes from reading too many medical texts. Maybe that comes from a fear of appearing insecure.

Bah, this is crap.